Tuesday, August 14. 2012

Dengue Fever afflicts millions of people around the world. It is a virus that is spread by a specific mosquito, the Aedes aegypti. Dengue fever can develop into a more serious disease Dengue hemorrhagic fever which can be fatal. Aedes aegypti is native to Africa, but has spread to other areas including the southern United States.

Oxitec, a company in Oxford, has genetically engineered the Aedes aegypti mosquito so that any males that mate in the wild will produce non-viable offspring. They believe this modification will reduce the population of this particular disease carrying mosquito and unlike pesticide use, will leave other populations of native mosquitoes intact.

Here is a video about Oxitec and what they do:

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But when Oxitec tried to introduce their genetically modified mosquito to Key West, the residents were up in arms. They did not want any part of “Robo-Frankenstein mosquitoes" in their backyard. From an opinion piece in the Miami Herald by David Rejeski and Eleonore Pauwels:

Most Europeans see the United States as the land that embraces genetic engineering. So imagine the surprise when a British firm — Oxitec — ran into the buzz saw of public opinion trying to introduce a genetically modified (GM) mosquito in Key West to eradicate the dreaded Dengue virus.

Within a few weeks of a public meeting to discuss the mosquito release, a petition against the initiative had more than 100,000 signatories. [The entire population of Monroe County, which encompasses The Keys, is only about 75,000.] Key West inhabitants have branded Oxitec mosquitoes with names like “Robo-Frankenstein mosquitoes,” “mutant mosquitoes,” and “Super bugs,” using rhetoric lifted from movies like Jurassic Park and The Hunger Games.

Are people overreacting? Maybe. But a closer read of many of the comments posted on the petition website provide a deeper insight into the resistance and some key lessons for future technologies dependent on genetic engineering.

I have always mused on the irony of how many people are fine with genetic engineering techniques like therapeutic cloning or enhancements in humans, but are adamantly opposed to any cloning or genetic modification of plants and animals, even if there is a therapeutic intent, like with Oxitec's mosquito. I have never been able to wrap my head around this bizarre contradiction.

But Rejeski and Pauwels, I think have touched on the heart of it:

Decades of research on risk perceptions have shown that people differentiate between “voluntary” risks, which we willfully undertake, and “non-voluntary” risks, which are imposed upon us. People will smoke themselves to death while fighting against a nearby factory emitting pollutants.

In this case, Key West inhabitants clearly saw the government and the company imposing their will on the population.

In other words, genetically modifying ourselves and our offspring by choice is one thing, but involuntarily sharing the environment with genetically modified organisms is something else entirely.

Interesting psychology there. It does not bode well for human genetic engineering when all of the concerns about safety seem to be reserved for modifying plants and animals and "choice" is the reigning factor in humans.

The only real reason to oppose genetic engineering in nonhuman animals, is the potential loss of biodiversity. But, unless we're the people who write old Russian jokes ("Ural Mountains are home to over 5000 species—mosquito alone accounts for 4500"), do we actually care if there's biodiversity in the mosquito population?

Most people's view of genetic engineering, however, is TABOO, pure and simple—without any religious excuse. I live in a city where 911 dispatchers often have a hard time finding out if accident victims are alive, because the Native Americans who make up 1/8 the population believe looking at a corpse will curse you to your own death.

People's attitude toward genetic engineering is precisely the same, only without the excuse of being an avowedly supernatural belief. Nobody really knows what governs luck, or what happens when you die—but we do in fact know how genetic engineering works. Nevertheless I had some classes, in college (!), with people who thought eating genetically modified food would make YOU mutate.

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